It's London from the Shell building in 1978. Situated right on a huge bend in the river it WAS much the best high panoramic viewpoint in the city for a rotational camera, spanning 270 degrees. (The missing quartile is the unglamorous part of London and looks into the sun anyway). I tried everywhere else and nothing could touch it: no wonder they chose the space in front to build the Millennium Wheel. Sadly, the latter looms large from here and ruins the uninterrupted grand sweep; obviously nobody will ever be able to use a rotational camera inside one of those sealed viewing pods, so a shot like this can never be repeated. Before the wheel went up they made a kind of a panorama for the brochure, using a wide angle camera from a helicopter, and several overlapping exposures. It’s a vastly inferior technique: wideangle lenses have all kinds of edge distortion, and it just doesn’t join up. If you want to make a comparison, take that brochure to the London Guildhall Library and ask to see the 8 foot Cibachrome contact-print of the above image which I made specially for them. I'm sure they didnt wait two years for the right day as I did; this kind of long distance clarity, evenly lit without dark cloud patches, is a very rare event. That’s why really top class city panoramas are so seldom achieved; they are too much trouble for the commercial returns. This picture was made for its own sake and I have never allowed it to be reproduced or used for any commercial purpose. If you want it on your wall you have to buy it from me as an autographed fine art object, as have a few serious collectors. Shot on a 10 inch Cirkut camera, 24-inch Turner-Reich lens, Agfa Aviphot Chrome, 90-inch by 9 inch transparency: i.e. 500 times the area of a 35mm slide
